1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a use of D-galactose in inhibition of quorum sensing and/or in prevention and/or treatment of oral bacterial diseases. In particular, provided are a composition for inhibiting quorum sensing and a composition for preventing and/or treating oral bacterial diseases, the composition comprising D-galactose; and a method of inhibiting quorum sensing and a method of preventing and/or treating oral bacterial diseases, the method comprising administering D-galactose.
2. Description of the Related Art
Dental caries and periodontal disease are representative oral diseases and are the main causes of tooth extraction. There have been many trials to effectively prevent and treat these diseases, but many restrictions still remain.
Antibiotics function to directly remove bacteria causing dental caries and periodontal diseases, but they also kill the beneficial bacteria and long-term use thereof is difficult because of the problem of resistance, etc. It is difficult to expect substantial effects of the materials, such as corn unsaponifiable fraction extract used as a therapeutic agent for periodontal diseases in some countries, on moderate to severe periodontal diseases, and their efficacy still remains controversial. Like antibiotics, mouthwashes worldwidely used have non-specific antiseptic action and also contain alcohol, and thus there is a risk of causing oral cancer and dry mouth.
Resent experimental results have reported that dental caries as well as periodontal disease are caused by not a single species of microorganisms, but mediated by signal transduction systems between various microorganisms. When the number of signaling molecules secreted by bacteria reaches the critical number, that is, quorum, bacteria sense the quorum sensing molecules, which induce biofilm formation and virulence. Currently known quorum sensing molecules are autoinducer-1 (AI-1), autoinducer-2 (AI-2), and oligopeptides. AI-1 is used for intra-species communication and AI-2 is a universal signal for interspecies communications, and plays an important role in biofilm formation and expression of virulence factors.
When these features of the virulent bacteria are utilized, therapeutic agents for oral diseases can be developed to effectively control dental caries and periodontal diseases. In other words, a drug which is able to effectively inhibit quorum sensing inducing biofilm formation and virulence without direct killing of bacteria is developed to provide a superior prophylactic or therapeutic agent having no disadvantages of the current therapeutic agents.
Since quorum sensing inhibitors do not directly kill bacteria, no resistance occurs and thus their long-term use is possible. Further, since quorum sensing inhibitors do not act against specific bacteria but interfere with communication between bacteria, they show broad spectrum of applications. When quorum sensing inhibitors are used together with antibiotics, they help actions of the antibiotics. Thus, although antibiotic is used in a small amount, great effects can be obtained. Owing to these advantages of quorum sensing inhibitors, they can be next-generation prophylactic or therapeutic agents capable of effectively controlling periodontal diseases.
Currently available quorum sensing inhibitors may be selected from chemicals synthesized using lead compounds such as furanones or homoserine lactones, peptide-like mimics, and a type of sugar, D-ribose. However, there have been no materials used as quorum sensing inhibitors in medical drugs or products. For industrialization of quorum sensing inhibitors, efficacy of substantially inhibiting quorum sensing in the human body and safety of being harmless to the human body in spite of their long-term use must be proven. The synthetic chemicals exhibit excellent inhibitory efficacy on quorum sensing, but in some cases, their safety has not been secured in a toxicity test, an animal test, and a clinical test. A type of sugar, D-ribose has no safety problem because it has been used for a long period of time, but its inhibitory efficacy is much lower than those of the synthetic chemicals.
Accordingly, there is a need for the development of a quorum sensing inhibitor having excellent inhibitory efficacy on quorum sensing and also securing safety.